


Fourteen on the Floor

by Astereae



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Homophobia, F slur, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, john winchester is a little bitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27545539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astereae/pseuds/Astereae
Summary: After Dean Winchester hears Castiel say he loves him, he is forced to reconcile with his past, his emotions, and everything he wanted to forget.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 81





	Fourteen on the Floor

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. Am I in college? Yes. Have I seen any supernatural past season 10? No. Do I have to write two essays by Saturday at midnight? Yes. Have I ignored them in favor of writing this in a day and a half? Also yes. Do I have other unfinished works? Again, yes. Yes I do. Enjoy.
> 
> Another thing yeah the gay oc is a cop. Just seems like something the writers would do. Fuck 12.

Dean had never told anyone this, but the second person he’d ever actually kissed was a boy. It was when he was 14. First time in a highschool ever, so it’s not like he was the only new kid for this move. A little comforting, a little more anonymous.

He’s kissed a girl, naturally, like he was supposed to, in the eighth grade. It hadn’t been great, because they were middle schoolers. Lots of tongue in a bad way.

Oliver Stead was a little short but a little mean, with long blonde hair that couldn’t quite make its way into a ponytail. The only reason that Dean talked to him in the first place is because he threw a mean right hook. And the only reason that he kept talking to him is that he didn’t  _ act _ gay. Not at first, anyways. And not to say that Dean knew exactly what acting gay meant. He knew that his father used it as an insult, along with pussy and fag, whenever he described feminine men. Oliver wasn’t feminine.

Dean didn’t know that he was attracted to him at first. At first, he thought he wanted to pick a fight with him. Something about his laugh stirred a feeling in his belly that he couldn’t tell apart from aggression. So he picked a fight. Pulled on the back of his head in the hallway. That’s where his face met Oliver’s mean right hook. Dean, bless his heart and all of his years of monster hunting, had never faced another regular human with a shred of MMA training. It took him by surprise. A lot of things about Oliver took him by surprise.

His father didn’t want him going to that school in the first place, since it was haunted and the spirit had already killed four students by the time that they got there. It was also the only highschool in a ten mile radius of their motel. And the ghost also only killed the varsity cheerleaders.

After their fight landed them both in detention, the two got a good laugh out of it. They were both pissed off at the world, and the friendship ran hard and fast right off the bat. Oliver taught Dean how to do a jump kick and Dean taught him how to make a molotov cocktail (The right way, with the bottle still closed and the rag tied around the outside of the neck.) It was a week later when Dean snuck out while his dad was gone and Sammy was asleep. They met at the highschool and broke in, ready and willing to fuck shit up. After a good run with some graffiti markers, they settled in the main gym with a six pack of cheap beers that Oliver had lifted.

Oliver’s side profile was a little flat, his nose turned up at the end, and his ruddy cheeks blended into his freckles in the low blue light of the moon, shining in through the gym skylight. Dean still felt like he wanted to punch something, and he didn’t know why, because he knew it wasn’t Oliver.

“I fucking hate this school,” Oliver said. He liked to say fuck like he’d just learned the word a week ago.

“I’ve been to ten times as many schools as you and I promise that none of them are any better.” Dean said, finishing off his can. “It all sucks. They brainwash you.”

“Society brainwashes you. It brainwashes everyone to be these mindless little slaves, just do what the adults say, what the corporations say. Society fucking sucks.”

Dean didn’t see where this was going. He hated school, but it was because there was no real authority to it. After you see your father tear out a werewolf’s heart with a five inch dollar store knife, you lose a little respect for everyone else. But Oliver was saying it with such conviction, anger, he felt it in his chest and nodded in agreement.

“Society sucks.” He said.

“You don’t suck though.” Oliver stated. “You’re fucking sick, Dean Winchester.”

“Hell yeah I am.” Dean pumped his fist in the air. “I kick ass and take names, you already know it.”

“You wanna know something that’ll piss off the adults so much?” Oliver asked, rolling over to straddle Dean’s lap. His breath smelled like cheap beer, but his hair smelled like green tea and something fruity, and his clothes smelled like the expensive fabric softener that Dean never got to use.

Dean felt that urge again. Was it violence? Really? He felt destructive, and writing bad words on lockers hadn’t gotten it out of him.

He was entranced by Oliver’s brown eyes, so dark compared to his pale skin and sandy hair. His turned up nose. Years later, he could probably describe the teen down to a T for any police sketch artist. His lips were thin, and chapped, and pale.

“What?” Dean asked. And Oliver kissed him.

It all made sense. The second their lips met, Dean understood, this was what he had been feeling the whole time. When he pulled away, Dean thought he forgot how to breathe. The kiss had been chaste, small, easy. Different from his overconfident approach to kissing a girl. His urge- misidentified as aggression- was quelled for a beautiful silent second before it came back in full force.

So he kissed Oliver back. It took under thirty seconds for him to realize that he wanted to be in charge of the situation, so he took over, rolling them flat onto the ground. It was a lot easier than kissing a girl, because Dean didn’t know what a girl would want during a kiss. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew how to give that to Oliver. It was messy, and a little slobbery, but they were kids without much practice.

They couldn’t hear over their heady breaths when the door opened, but the sound of a shotgun blast made them separate.

John Winchester, for whom garnered more respect than God to Dean, had just popped two shells of rock salt into a ghost. The gym’s walls caught the echo, and everything was silent for a breath. John looked at his son on the ground, and it took him a second for him to process that the person he was on top of was- in spite of the golden hair framing his face- a boy.

“Dad-” Dean began, but John wouldn’t hear it. He picked him up by the top of his head, his neck extended back.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He growled.

“Just messing around, I swear!” Oliver said. “It didn’t mean anything!” That hurt more than the pulling of Dean’s hair for just a second.

“You better scamper on off before your mother finds out you died for turning my son into a faggot.” John told him, and Oliver wasted no time, getting off of his ass and booking it for the exit.

“Dad, you’re hurting me.” Dean said, shutting his eyes. He wouldn’t cry in front of his dad, he  _ wouldn’t, _ not when he was a big kid now, not when he wanted him to start taking him on hunts more and more. “You heard what he said, it didn’t mean anything.”

“It would be one thing if he forced himself on you,” John said, pushing the barrel of his shotgun to the bottom of his jaw. “Which you wouldn’t let happen because you’re stronger than any fruity bitch,” The gun trailed to his ear. It wasn’t loaded. It wasn’t loaded. “And another if you let it happen, which you wouldn’t because you’re a man.” The gun pressed to his temple. “But you were on top of him. And you were enjoying it.”

John pulled the trigger, and Dean’s vision went bright before he ended up on the ground. The muzzle burn hurt like shit and the concussion was bad, he could already tell. Then one of John’s steel toe boots hit his stomach. He coughed and gagged, the pain and the fact that he was mildly buzzed making him nauseous. He picked him up by the collar and punched him straight across the jaw. One of his molars flew into his mouth and filled it with blood. He didn’t even have the good sense to spit, he just let the blood dribble from his mouth and didn’t choke.

“I raised a good american boy.” John said, hitting his face again, his cheek, and Dean’s ears rang. “I didn’t raise a gay. So listen to me, boy,” he hit him again. “You don’t ever kiss a boy again or I will shoot you dead. No blanks, no rock salt, dead.”

“Yes, sir.” Dean managed weakly. John let go of his collar and he collapsed the the floor.

“I couldn’t hear you, what was that?” John asked, kicking his son in the ribs.

“Yes, Sir!” Dean said, more pain in his voice. John kicked him again, and he said it again, “Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes sir!”

“Are you a faggot?”

“No, sir!”

“Are you a pervert?”

“No, sir!”

“Are you a pussy?”

“And what happens if I ever see you just so much as look at a boy in some fucked up way again?”

“You shoot me dead, sir!”

“Get up and get yourself back to the motel. I have a ghost to kill.”

It took a week for him to finally get the ghost. Dean was too hurt to walk, much less go back to school, so he never saw Oliver Stead again. His father didn’t talk to him beyond a grunt for almost a month.

Whenever he felt that feeling, that sort of aggression that he felt with Oliver Stead, he either pushed it to the recesses of his mind, or he acted on it in an easier way- actual aggression. Punch something. Anything. Anyone. Ideally, the object of aggression. It helped a little, but it always left him feeling somewhat dissatisfied. No one knew about that night other than his father, burned up like any good hunter, and Oliver Stead, who was probably off living in San Francisco dying of AIDS. Not even Sam. Not even Cas. Dean hardly ever thought about it himself, unless it was when he was waking up at three am hard, and he had to force himself to think about some hot pornstar instead of whatever he had been dreaming of. Not that women didn’t do it for him, but it always felt different when he dreamed about men. Not wrong, just different. But it did feel wrong, when he woke up, and he had been to hell and back, trapped on demon worlds all on his own and still  _ still _ he was brought back to that crappy high school gym and his father beating him until he couldn’t walk.

He didn’t feel it for Cas at first. It snuck up on him. All the other times he’d felt it, it was hard and fast to the stomach, looking at a man’s triceps across a smoky bar, or at a man’s jaw, or even on the porn he watched to destress. He would push it down like pushing down a gag. Sam wondered why he watched so much lesbian porn, figured Dean thought it was hotter, but really it was to avoid the feeling all together. 

So yeah, he didn’t feel it for Cas at first. And when he did, the feeling (forever going to disguise itself as aggression) was recognized as annoyance. Cas didn’t have any of the things that usually made it act up (Dean wouldn’t dare admit he had a ‘type’ for men.)

By the time he realized he was in love with Cas it was too late to do anything about it. He loathed that part of himself. And he repeated that conversation with his dad in front of the mirror every time he thought about it. It was easier when Cas absorbed the leviathans, easier when he went “bad”, but he would always come back and Dean would always let him back, because he couldn’t not. And then the feeling was so entrenched in him, so even the poor half-fulfilling twinges he got around Cas when he did something stupid, or something just normal, like smile, made him feel happy. Happy wasn’t quite the word. Giddy, maybe.

It got bad, Dean would chase the feeling with Cas so much that on one of their “off again” periods of friendship while Dean was living his hedonistic demon life with Crowley, he saw a man at a bar whose face was nice, who had the tight, slender build that attracted him, and he approached him. Not to fight, but to buy him a drink. Dean Winchester, even when a demon, wasn’t supposed to put the moves on another man. So after he realized what happened, he broke the man’s neck and moved on. Didn’t tell Crowley why, because the demon would have a field day with that. He had to stop chasing the feeling. He had to, but he couldn’t.

So he started to push it down again, just as soon as it started. Reject it unless he was in his weakest moments. Nothing was going to happen. He wouldn’t let it, because his father’s soul, put to rest, would undoubtedly come back with a loaded double barrel and shoot his brains out, and then shoot his ghost’s brain’s out. And he was so disgusted by it that he’d never really consider it.

And Cas should be disgusted by it too. Dean was very certain of this, if not much else.

And of course, as with everything else, his certainty had to be unraveled.

He didn’t want to consider where the conversation was going. Cas could tell him dozens of things, he just couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. Cas looked at him, tears in his eyes, and Dean couldn’t feel a thing except for that god-awful not aggression. He stood still, unable to say a word.

And then Cas said the thing he had been feeling in his chest for the past twelve years. “I Love You.”

And then he was gone. Dean was alone.

He sulked back to Sam in total silence.

“What happened?” He asked. “Where’s Cas?”

“The empty. Turbo Hell.” It was like the final nail in the coffin. That’s what happened to gays. They got sent to turbo hell.

“But I thought he was supposed to be happy for that to happen.”

Had he been happy? That last tear-filled shout? Finally speaking into existence what the pair had been feeling for over a decade? It just scared Dean.

“Dean, what happened?” Sam asked again.

“He just got what he deserved. Faggot.” Dean said. That caught Sam by surprise.

“What did he say to you?” He asked. “Dean-”

“Can you stop saying my name?” He snapped. “Are you gonna tell me you’re gay for me, too?” Sam took a step back.

“Is that what he said?” Of course he was concerned, not disgusted, like he should be, like he had to be.

“Yes. Good riddance.” Dean spat, but he was shaking, fourteen on the floor, as his father kicked him with a steel toe boot.

“Dean, no matter what he said, he’s still Cas. He’s still your best friend.”

“I can’t be best friends with that.” He said.

“Dean, it’s the mid twenty-first century, don’t tell me that you’re gonna stop being friends with someone because of... he’s an angel so I doubt that even has the same sort of... You were practically Charlie’s older brother....”

“I’m sorry we didn’t all get your liberal Stanford education in our early twenties,” Dean snarled. “I bet you probably kissed a few boys yourself, didn’t you? You were always a little fruity.”

“When has this conversation ever been about kissing? And I haven’t, by the way.” He sat across the table from him. “We’ve got to focus on getting him back.”

“I can’t... I can’t look at him again, Sammy, I can’t.”

“What’s your problem? He’s still Cas!” Dean squeezed his hands together.

“Sam-”

“What? You have no excuse to act like this.”

He did. It was muzzle flare against his temple.

“He can rot in the empty.”

It was his tooth falling into his mouth.

“He’s your best friend. He’s  _ family _ .”

It was a broken cheek and the smell of dirt and shit on his father’s boots.

“I  _ can’t. _ ” He said, standing violently. He was shaking. He was a hunter. He’d died a few times. He’d been to hell. Tortured. He’d been to purgatory and fought for his life for a year. And he was still fourteen. In a high school gym in Missouri. He’d been thinking about it far too much in the recent hour.

He went to bed and Sam didn’t follow him.

It was four days before Sam knocked on his door.

“No.” Dean said.

“I found a shifter. I thought you could get back into hunting, that it would help.”

“Where?”

“Just get the car ready. I’ll tell you on the way.”

Dean loved the Impala. Ironically enough, he had also been aggressive to her at the worst times in his life. His hands fit into the grooves of the wheel like they were supposed to be there.

“So I think that we actually stayed here when we were kids, standard haunting.” Sam said. “Lux, Missouri.” Dean slammed on the breaks.

“What the hell?” Sam asked, peeling himself off the dashboard. “It’s a shifter hunt. Silver bullet. Straight forward, no different than anything we’ve been doing for the past fifteen years. Has nothing to do with Cas or the Empty.”

Sam didn’t know about it. Sam couldn’t know about it.

“You’re right.” Dean said. “Sorry, I thought you said something different.” Sam gave him his signature concerned side-eye, but didn’t say a word. Sam delivered the details. He was always very goal-oriented in his loss. Dean just raged.

Lux had not changed since 1993. They stayed in the same motel. Next door to the one they had stayed in before.

“What even was the case that Dad worked here?”

“Haunting. Dead cheerleader. 93.” Dean said.

“You didn’t even have to look it up.” Sam said. “What happened here?”

“Just a standard haunting.” Dean said, slinging his bag onto the bed. “You were like, ten. I don’t blame you for not remembering.”

Sam pulled out John’s old notebook. “Yeah, looks like it. I feel like we stayed here for longer than we needed, though.”

Dean rustled through the bag for some sheriff’s department badges. “Let’s go get the footage of the crimes.”

“Sure thing, man.” Dean said. “Let’s go.”

Out of all of the people he was expecting to be at the police station, a tall, slender, fit man, with blonde hair and an upturned nose and freckles, was not it. Oliver Stead didn’t really seem to be the kind of person who would respect authority, much less enforce someone else’s. Dean froze. Within a week every single thing he wanted to forget was shoving into his face.

“Sheriff’s department,” Sam said, flashing his badge. Dean’s hand was still on his. Sam elbowed him, so he pulled it up.

“What’s up, you two?” Oliver said, not looking up from his computer. “What can I help you with?”

“We need the footage from those mystery murders.” Sam said. “Maybe give us a USB?”

“Sure thing,” Oliver said, tapping away. There was a gold band on his ring finger.

“Thank you, Officer Stead.” Dean said, taking the USB from him when he handed it over the desk.

“Do I know you?” Oliver asked, looking up. Brown eyes. Like honey.

What was Dean thinking?

His father’s hand pulling his hair.

“Dean Winchester?” Oliver said. “Man, I thought your dad hatecrimed you.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Dean said. “I’m Deputy Roberts, my partner here is Deputy Towsend. We’re just following up on a similar murder in a neighboring county.”

Oliver furrowed his brows. His boyish features didn’t quite stretch to suit his middle-aged face. “Yeah, alright, deputy. You just looked awful similar to an old friend.”

Dean saluted and walked out the door fast as he could.

Sam ran up behind him. “Why did he recognize you?”

“Must’ve been in a class together.”

“You’ve been in classes with a lot of people. The only people that recognize us are people you’ve stupidly hooked up with.”

A gun pressed under his jaw.

“I don’t remember. This place was about as unremarkable as it gets, alright?”

“What did he mean when he said he thought Dad hate-crimed you?”

“I don’t remember.” Dean said. “Do your computer ju-ju on this.” He tossed the thumb drive to his brother. Sam caught it.

“He didn’t have a name tag on.” He said.

“What?”

“You called him Officer Stead. He didn’t have a name tag on.”

“Are you sure, Sammy? Maybe you just didn’t see it.”

There was that concerned side-eye again.

The shifter they found in an abandoned mineshaft. Three silver bullets. One bad cut on Sammy and one broken rib on Dean. Not having to sew himself up, he ended up in the nearest dive bar.

“Okay, I can’t get over it, you look just like Dean Winchester who went through hell.” Oliver said. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Dean took a shot.

“I’m gonna take that as a yes,” The man took a seat next to him. “I really thought your dad killed you that night. You disappeared.”

“That night was a mistake.”

“Scared the shit out of me, too.” Oliver said. “Your old man was a piece of work, did you ever try to come out to him?”

“He’s dead.” Dean said, holding up his glass to the bartender. “Has been over a decade.”

“Forgive me for not feeling sorry, but that man was a real piece of work.”

“My father was a hero.” Dean watched the whisky pour into his glass.

“He beat you senseless for kissing a boy.”

“Because it was wrong.”

“It wasn’t. Dean, I... I married a man, I met him senior year of highschool. I had shitty parents, too, I know it sucks, but you’re gonna kill yourself if you hold onto what he told you.”

“Holding on to what he told me has kept me alive.”

“It sure doesn’t look like it.”

“I was fourteen. I didn’t know what I wanted.”

“Have you repressed everything for thirty years? Never found another guy you liked?”

“I’m done with this. Go fuck your fruity husband and rot in hell when you die.” Dean slammed his glass down along with enough bills to cover twice the night he had.

“Jesus Christ.” Oliver said. “Sorry.” The apology sounded far more genuine than anything else.

“This was the place where you were beaten half dead.” Sam said.

“What?” Dean asked, he bet that Sam could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“I woke up one day and you were on the couch, bleeding and bruised and could barely walk. And I didn’t understand why Dad wouldn’t take you to the hospital.”

“Yeah. I got into it with some bigger kids at school. Wasn’t used to being in a bigger pond.”

“Stop lying to me, Dean. I thought this would make the whole Cas thing a little better, but you’ve just been acting worse.”

“This has nothing to do with Cas.” Dean growled, barely able to say the name.

“That’s a lie.”

“Pack up the car, Sammy.”

“Not until you tell me what really happened here.”

“Dad beat the shit out of me, ok? I broke into the highschool to graffiti some shit and got in the way of his hunt, so he beat the shit out of me.”

“You’d gone with him on dozens of hunts before. He never beat you half dead for messing something up.”

“Well, he did that time.”

“Dean, you have to stop lying to me. We’re not gonna fix this if you can’t tell me the truth.”

Dean ignored him and packed up the car by himself. They were half way back to the base when Dean opened his eyes in the front seat.

“Did you ever kiss a man when you were at Stanford?” Dean asked. Sam laughed lightly.

“Maybe once or twice when I was drunk. Dares, you know? Why?”

“Its-” Dean steeled himself. “Dad caught me kissing that Officer. Oliver Stead, when we were fourteen.”

Sam laughed like he almost couldn’t believe it. “Seriously? You kissed a dude?”

“He held his shotgun to my head and told me he’d kill me if I ever did it again.” Dean said.

“You mean the gun you won’t touch?” Sam said. “You know I’m not one to defend Dad, but-”

“He was right. It was disgusting and wrong.”

“Dean-”

“And I’m still disgusting and wrong. It’s been almost thirty years since and I  _ still _ can’t get rid of it.”

“Get rid of what?”

“That feeling. It wasn’t that bad when it was just some guy in a bar I could punch but Cas-”

“Dean, are you Gay?”

“No! I can’t... I love women. You know how I am with the chicks.”

“Sexuality is a spectrum.” Sam said. “You don’t have to just choose one or the other.”

“It’s wrong. Unnatural.”

“No, it’s not.” Sam slowed down and pulled to the side of the highway. “Dean, that’s totally natural.”

“I thought it was just some fucked up attraction until I fell in love with Cas.” Dean said. And that was it. He admitted it too, just like Cas had. “I fell in love with him.”

“Well, then, let’s get him back.” Sam said.

“You should just kill me instead.” Dean said.

“Well, I’m not Dad, you’re not Dad, it’s 2020, and you’re gonna get through this.” Sam said.

When they got Cas out of the empty, he was different. Of course he was different. Those things always changed them, but it would go back to normal, it always did. Dean dragged him out with one hand on his wrist and the other one towards the light. They collapsed in the stupid abandoned building shit went down in this time, clutching each other.

“I thought I was never going to see you again,” Cas said.

“I know,” Dean said.

“You can forget what I said, I never meant-”

Dean kissed him. “I love you too.” He said. “It terrifies me. I never wanted to admit it.”

“You do?” Cas asked.

“Since forever.” Dean said.


End file.
